Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
When Britain’s most famous farmer, Jeremy Clarkson, felt chest pains after a swim he did the wisest thing and went to see his doctor. Within hours he was in hospital having potentially life-saving stents fitted around his heart.
I don’t know what influence Clarkson has with the NHS, but his ability to get an appointment with a doctor is admirable. I don’t see him as a mollycoddled softy, so when he felt ill he really must have been unwell.
The problem is knowing whether some symptoms are serious, or just our health conscious minds playing tricks. Too much chatting to Dr Google online, or comparing illnesses with fellow TikTok social media surfers, can create more trouble than it solves.
How many folk lie awake in the dark hours of the night worrying about a self-diagnosed condition when it turns out to be a cold coming on.
As modern technology pushes all sorts of information our way, have we allowed ourselves to become a nation of wimps?
Influencers, those strange people who gather up vast armies of followers for their online homilies, are driving millions of viewers to think they have undiagnosed ADHD. That’s attention deficit disorder, characterised by difficulty concentrating, hyperactivity and impulsiveness.
A recent report said one in four adults think they have got ADHD. Only half sought medical help. The real figure is said to be 1 in 20.
A 2022 study in the journal of European Psychiatry — yes, I read it when I can’t get hold of a copy of Beano — found that young people were more likely to diagnose conditions than the older generation. Let’s face it, when you get to my age you learn to live with your weaknesses.
The main problem with self-diagnosing, especially mental health illnesses, is that the likes of TikTok and online medical sites don’t offer expert advice. The wrong treatment can make matters worse.
Scores of celebrities are claiming they suffer from ADHD including Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and Harry Potter actress Emma Watson. This probably explains why young people are more likely to sit chewing their fingernails over a dodgy diagnosis than pensioners. If you are a fan of some of the celebrities who post the innermost thoughts of their lives online, then having a matching condition might seem more appropriate than getting a tattoo.
It does seem rather sad that so many youngsters are becoming health freaks at such an early stage in their lives.
I am not ridiculing them. If they have a genuine illness then they need expert help, not some amateur quack. Jeremy Clarkson got it spot on when he immediately went to his doctor. Hopefully he has many more years of farming and driving fast cars ahead of him.
Some people will say they are turning more and more to the internet for their health consultations when it’s becoming extremely difficult in many areas of the country to get a face to face meeting with a doctor.
It’s a pity if we are losing that personal contact. But I don’t rate the internet, not even Dr Google, a particularly safe alternative if I should go through an experience similar to Jeremy.
Tipping point
Former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond shared with me what I hesitate to call a distinction. Both of us, at some time in our working lives, had a crack at being newspaper horse racing tipsters.
I masqueraded under the nom de plume of Huntsman a few years before Mr Salmond emerged as racing tipster for the Glasgow Herald. I don’t think readers greatly missed either of us when the time came to move on.
Mr Salmond, who died a couple of weeks ago while attending a cultural function in North Macedonia, was spotted regularly around the race tracks north of the Border before politics, in particular the fight for Scottish independence, assumed greater importance than the 3-30 at Hamilton. He took over the tipping role at the Glasgow Herald from another politician of note, Robin Cook.
I fear I had no celebrity forerunner. I was thrust into the task of selecting a horse in every race at every meeting after a late return to the office from lunch. My pay? A free copy of the Sporting Chronicle and unlimited coffee while I pored over printed lists of horses whose names meant little to me.
I did once have a run of seven winning naps. Readers were ringing the office asking what Huntsman was giving for the next day’s racing. This was followed by 24 consecutive losers and they stopped calling — except the rude ones.
Alex Salmond once said that he was giving up the tipping. After all, a long losing run was no vote winner. It was rumoured some constituents stopped speaking to him.
At least I was able to hide behind Huntsman. Not many people knew that I was the tipster behind the name. In the 1970s, when I was doing the column, names like Huntsman were inherited. Passed on from writer to writer. I was the last of the line. Huntsman and his losing tips, condemned to the anonymous mists of history.
